Saturday, August 04, 2012

Brownie update

As reported here, Josie has given me until August 5 (extended from the original deadline of July 31) to get my Black Chip Poker account up to $1200 in order to earn a batch of what she claims to be the world's best brownies. This challenge was issued when the balance stood at $661. I have been trying mightily, but with little to show for it. I've had a couple of min-cashes, but that's about it. It has been fail, fail, fail, several tournaments a day every day. Deeply demoralizing.


Tonight was the first glimmer of hope I've had. It was an $11 freezeout, which is most of what I've been doing, with the $2000 guaranteed prize pool well exceeded. My stack was below average for most of the tournament, but never in dire straits. The lack of flexibility that a cramped stack brings forced me to just play solid ABC, not get much out of line.

Just before the money bubble burst, I cracked aces with tens by flopping a set, won an enormous pot, and took over the tournament chip lead with 27 left. But then I entered the card graveyard, and was dealt a never-ending string of J-2, 8-3, etc. The big stack gave me the ability to just ride out the flurry of all-ins that inevitably occurs for a while after the bubble bursts, but that meant that I was not the one profiting by knocking out other players. I was just coasting. By the final table bubble, I was down to below average.

But I got a big opportunity. At a four-handed table, the short stack open-shoved with what turned out to be A-2. I re-shoved with Q-Q, expecting that to end the action. But the big stack in the small blind called, showing A-K.

Here's how it played out:


As soon as I flopped the set, I relaxed and actually missed the fact that Mr. A-K turned the straight. When my table disappeared, I thought it was just because with the elimination we were on to the final table. But the new table didn't pop up. That's when I looked at the hand history and realized what had happened. It made me want to throw up.

So I finished in 8th:




If I had won that pot, I would have had about 198,000 chips. I would have been way out in front with the chip lead, and would have been in a prime position to go for the $625 first prize.

"For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: 'It might have been!'"

I've done so many buy-ins with so little reward that the $82 I won only brings me back up to $415. This is still more than double what it was a couple of weeks ago, before I had those two nice scores back to back, but obviously still well down from my peak. It seems impossibly far from $1200, given less than 48 hours left to get there.

Along the way, I had two opportunities to prove the power of the Mighty Deuce-Four, and it did not disappoint. I flopped two pair both times, bet and won both pots:




I'm afraid it's going to be back to brownie mixes from the store for me. So sad.

4 comments:

Josie said...

Ack! You play tourneys so well and you keep getting so close to the big money! How many bad beats can you get? It's very demoralizing. Of course today's only August 4th. *evil grin*

The Neophyte said...

While my 2-4 luck cannot rival yours I have made chips lately by playing it like AK and flopping big. Your luck in flips seems to rival mine though, even when you hit you lose. Hang in there Grump, you got a big score coming.

Anonymous said...

lol with black chip poker , I have been trying to cash out some of my winnings and was informed that since I was usa player that they were going to close out my accout and only refund my original deposit.

Anonymous said...

email avail on request